


A Little Comfort

by OliveTheClimber



Category: Nemesis - April Daniels
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Danny finding comfort in non-toxic ways, Family Bonding, Found Family, Gen, Hobbies, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Post-Sovereign, Robot Mom is Best Mom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 09:46:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30087207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OliveTheClimber/pseuds/OliveTheClimber
Summary: Danny's hiatus from being the world's greatest hero has truly begun. The toxicity of the thrill of hurting others out of her life for the moment, Danny explores a new hobby that has caught her eye. It's dumb, really, she thinks. But she wants to share it with Doc.
Relationships: Doc Impossible & Danielle "Danny" Tozer | Dreadnaught
Kudos: 6





	A Little Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> I finished re-reading Sovereign, so I figured to finally write a few Nemesis fics because damnnnnn I wanna write this superhero legion of gays. Also I'm unsure whether to write these fics in 1st or 3rd person. Lemme know what the whole two of you reading think.

There was a certain silence to her room when her alarm went off. For the first time in a while, she allowed herself to sleep in a little. After all, today was day number one of Danny’s hiatus from being the world’s strongest superhero, Dreadnought. Well actually it was more like a few days into it. She had spent time away from New Port with her girlfriend, Sarah aka Calamity, after the fallout of the near-genocide of an entire part of the planet’s population had settled. Though today was the first day Danny was going to live in New Port without flying around as Dreadnought. Kinetiq would be taking over in that role until Danny felt right enough to return to caping.

Though the blonde girl groaned, rolling around in bed a bit. Her phone’s alarm woke her up at 11am, meaning she had a whole day ahead of her to do… something. Danny’s first appointment with her new therapist was not until the following Monday and it was Friday. So three days until she maybe finally got to explore all the issues she had, the ones that were making her hurt so often. Hurting so much that the thrill of hurting others always made her feel better. But nearly killing Garrison and the thought of being able to kill her… Danny shook her head. Best to not start the day off terribly.

Slowly, that rolling around in bed led to Danny going off-bed and onto the floor. Normally she would just use the lattice to lift herself into the air, but today was one of those good old floor days. Too much sleep? She read once that sleeping too much could lead to wanting even more sleep, just like how you need more sleep when you don’t get enough rest. Maybe she’d have to ask Doc about it later.

Lazily, she rose up from the ground and looked around her new Legion bedroom. When she and Doc lived together prior, outside of the tower, she had never decorated her own room there. Hell, she didn’t know how to do that. Most people decorated their bedrooms to reflect their personalities and their interests, but Danny wasn’t even sure what her interests were. A negative outcome of becoming Dreadnought and only ever focusing on that? Well being Dreadnought slowly bled into becoming her sole interest and being pretty much her entire personality. She needed to separate being Danielle from being Dreadnought. Today? Today would be entirely dedicated to figuring out what she likes again.

The tower’s layout always felt like a maze to Danny. Especially after the re-building, following the whole Utopia incident, she still needed to memorize the layout in her head. One of Danny’s goals was to rely more on herself and not entirely on the lattice. While practicing with the lattice let Dreadnought do so many fantastic things, the whole incident with losing her powers made her realize one major thing: how wholly reliant she was on them. This hiatus was a chance for Danny to figure herself out. To find out who she was. Not some on the edge superhero who was wholly close to killing anyone who crossed the line of the law.

Her morning wandering eventually led her to find the dining area. It was a little big, though to be fair, it was originally meant for an entire group of people. Not just the three who currently lived there: Danny, Doc, and Kinetiq. Sarah still lived with her parents and Valkyrie? Well she was still off doing her “ritual.” Even thinking about it turned Danny’s stomach upside down. Kinetiq was probably already out on patrol for the day, so the kitchen? Dining area? Whatever it was, was pretty much empty. Breakfast was a simple affair. Toast, eggs, and bacon. The easiest most basic breakfast she could think of. The past few months, breakfast tended to be a quick affair. Dreadnought tended to burn a lot of calories being a cape, though Danny never fully realized how she never actually cooked for herself all that much.

“Oh… it’s gonna suck if I can save the world twice, but somehow burn my eggs.” Danny said to herself, but she pressed forward attempting to remember the few times she made herself eggs. It’s funny how months of moonlighting as a superhero can wipe away memories of doing the most simple tasks. Bread would go into the toaster last, so for now she focused on the eggs and bacon.

Sometimes it was almost shocking to live in a tower filled with hypertech, but the refrigerator sitting in front of her was completely normal. Like sure, it was a lot newer and more advanced than the one she used to have at her old home, but this was just… normal. And maybe normalcy is what she needed now. Her eyes scanned the cold lair of food for what she needed, though it didn’t take long to find the eggs and bacon.

And in Danny’s defense it wasn’t like her forte was in cooking. And at the very least the bacon came out okay. Though the eggs? She didn’t pull any punches in her realization that those eggs were… torched beyond repair. It was like Magma himself had made these. The toast though? A+. It was toast with fake butter on it, and it was the simplest most pure pleasure any person on the planet could go through.

Now? Now was the time to go out into town and… look for something to do. If she was going to though…

“So this will disguise me?” Danny asked, sitting in a rolly chair across from her new “adoptive” mother. It was a small, cute, pink hair clip. Dreadnought was world famous, and living as herself was important to the community. But she still had her fears about being hounded and mobbed in public. Living normally was basically impossible for her now, and the events of her emancipation hearing being totally outed to the media basically confirmed those fears.

“The clip is hypertech meant to basically change the style and color of your hair while it’s in.” Doc Impossible said, looking over something on her tablet. Ever since finally kicking her alcohol addiction, the scientist android functioned as the core of Danny’s support network. All the love from a parent Danny ever craved from her ex-mother? Doc gave that unconditional care and support in spades. Her white lab coat inspired that love whenever Danny saw it. “When it comes to people recognizing you, having a total change to your hair can help throw them off. Especially in everyday life? I’ve been working on another thing that could completely disguise your face, but I didn’t know if you’d want that.”

Danny looked at the hair clip in her hand and smirked. She jumped off the rolly chair and hugged Doc, who was taken aback for a moment, before returning the sign of affection. Things were still new for both of them, and it was an infinitely important and exciting development. Despite that learning curve of their new relationship, Doc knew she would always be there to support Danny no matter what. 

“So, kiddo, what do you plan on doing out there anyways?” 

“Well… I’m not sure, really… I figured I’d try to find something new to do, you know?”

“Ooooooh, shopping for a hobby, huh? That’s not a bad idea. Everyone has their hobbies, even the old Dreadnought did.”

“Really? He did?” Danny felt shocked, though it made total sense. He was a person just like everyone else. “What were they?”

“He’ll probably roll in his grave, but I’ve never seen a man more obsessed with collecting and droning on about old sitcoms in my life.” Doc’s smile went ear-to-ear. “There were so many nights where he made Magma watch them with him. Pretty sure Magma still hears Ever _ ywhere You Look _ every time he sits on a couch.”

Danny snorted. She snorted real loud. Just basically one percent away from breaking down into laughing. Something like that would make sense though. Sitcoms were the ultimate perceived normality, so her predecessor being drawn to that made some actual sense in her mind. She coughed to suppress the laugh, before finally deciding to put the clip into her hair.

“So do I just… think about what I want it to look like?” Danny asked, wondering about the small piece of hypertech. Another laugh escaped from Doc.

“I’m still working on a hypertech neural interface that won’t bring about the end of the world.” Doc replied with a smirk. “Connect it to your phone and it’ll pretty much give you an app that works exactly like the one for your suit. It won’t actually change your hair physically, but it will modify how it looks outwardly to everyone. Including you. When you take it out, the illusion will fade back to the real you.”

“Hmm…” Danny did as she was told, getting the app up and running through the wireless connection to her phone. The app was like all those video games where you get to choose the style and color of your character’s hair, though also unsurprisingly complex. The grin on her face though? She had always wanted to dye her hair some wild color or see how she might look with some other hairstyle. Even if she hadn’t needed some privacy from the public eye, this sort of thing would be right up her alley anyways. “What kinda style would look good on me though?”

“Well your hair has always been on the short side, so why not experiment with something longer?” Doc was completely correct. Being in her line of work meant that long hair, more or less, was a detriment to her safety. So Danny’s two haircuts since being given Dreadnought’s mantle have been short and shorter. 

Once more her eyes drifted back to her phone screen, as Danny looked through all of the different styles. She couldn’t help but try on a few. Each one made her look like a completely new person, especially when given a bright color shift. She knew that the color needed to be toned back, as much as she loved the look with bright pink bubblegum hair, the less people looking at her right now the better.

Color-wise, Danny settled on giving herself the same black-colored hair as Doc. It was simple, unassuming, and it made Danny feel more like Doc’s daughter. Style-wise? After flickering around for nearly fifteen minutes, having her hair suddenly shift appearance from one style to the next, she finally decided on long hair that draped over her shoulder. One look in the mirror confirmed everything Doc had said prior.

“Wow… You’re right… I really do look like a different person, if I completely turn off recognizing my face.” Danny said, as Doc appeared behind her reflection, placing her hands on Danny’s shoulders. 

“But it’s still you. And you look pretty damn good.”

Just hearing something like that? It made Danny feel like the most dazzling person on the planet right now. She looked like herself, the long hair she never had making her feel more comfortable in herself than she had in a long while. If anything… It was a nice change of pace. A good start. With a quick hug from Doc, Danny was out into the city trying to act as inconspicuous as possible.


End file.
